[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., ARIZ., CALIF., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

August 15



TENNESSEE----impending execution

Inmate asks for electric chair death in Thursday execution



A Tennessee inmate has made a last-minute request to be put to death in the 
electric chair, an option his lawyer described as "also unconstitutional, yet 
still less painful" than the state's preference of a three-drug lethal 
injection.

The state Department of Correction on Wednesday confirmed 56-year-old Stephen 
West made the request and said the Thursday execution will be carried out by 
electrocution.

West previously opted against selecting a preference, which would have resulted 
in lethal injection. West's attorney described both options as unconstitutional 
in his still-active U.S. Supreme Court challenge, as he seeks a stay in the 
execution.

"Seeking to avoid the constitutionally-impermissible pain and suffering created 
by Tennessee's 3-drug midazolam-based protocol, Mr. West has, as have two other 
Tennessee inmates before him, agreed to be executed by the 
also-unconstitutional, yet still less painful, method of execution, Tennessee's 
electric chair," his attorney wrote in the court filing.

Two Tennessee inmates, David Miller and Edmund Zagorski, chose to die by 
electric chair in 2018 because of concerns about pain associated with the 
state's lethal injection procedure. Both unsuccessfully argued to courts that 
Tennessee's procedure, which uses the drug midazolam, results in a prolonged 
and torturous death. Before this year, the last time a state used the electric 
chair to execute an inmate was 2013.

Zagorski, similar to West, made a last minute to request the electric chair 
after previously being set to use lethal injection which resulted in a brief 
delay in his execution to allow the state time to prepare for using the 
alternative method.

Tennessee has also put 2 inmates to death by injection since August 2018.

West's attorney has argued that some "feasible and readily implemented 
alternative methods of execution exist that significantly reduce the 
substantial risk of severe pain and suffering" compared with the state's 
three-drug protocol or electrocution: a single bullet to the back of the head, 
a firing squad, a "euthanasia oral cocktail" or 1-drug pentobarbital, according 
to a February court filing.

West was 1 of 4 death row inmates who sued last year, asking a federal court's 
permission to use a firing squad as an execution method. Currently, just 3 
states — Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah — continue to allow the use of firing 
squads. However, the last time that method was used was in 2010.

In Tennessee, condemned inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 can opt for 
the electric chair. Tennessee is 1 of 6 states that allow such a choice, 
according to a database from the Death Penalty Information Center.

3 others allow the electric chair as a backup method.

The last state other than Tennessee to carry out an execution by electrocution 
was Virginia in 2013, according to Death Penalty Information Center data.

No state now uses electrocution as its main execution method, according to the 
center, which doesn't take a stand on the death penalty but has been critical 
of its application.

Georgia and Nebraska courts have ruled the electric chair unconstitutional. 
About two decades ago it looked as if the U.S. Supreme Court would weigh in on 
the issue. It agreed to hear a Florida case after a series of botched 
executions there. But Florida adopted lethal injection, and the case was 
dropped.

West was convicted of the 1986 kidnapping and stabbing deaths of a mother and 
her 15-year-old daughter, and of raping the teen. West has said his 
then-17-year-old accomplice killed both victims. The co-defendant received a 
life sentence, with parole possible in 2030.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee has denied West's clemency application, which also 
said West takes powerful medication to treat mental illness

(source: Associated Press)

********************

Judge: Captured Tennessee inmate could face death penalty



A Tennessee convict accused of killing a corrections administrator and escaping 
prison could face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder, a 
judge told the prisoner Wednesday.

Curtis Ray Watson appeared before Judge Janice Craig in a video arraignment in 
Lauderdale County court. Craig told Watson that he is charged with especially 
aggravated burglary, aggravated sexual assault and escape in addition to the 
murder charge.

Lauderdale County District Attorney Mark Davidson said his office is 
considering seeking capital punishment, but a decision would come only after 
Watson is formally indicted when a grand jury convenes in October. Watson, 44, 
would face life in prison if the state does not seek death and he is found 
guilty of 1st-degree murder.

Watson's court-appointed public defender Bo Burk made no comments in court and 
a plea was not entered. Watson's preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 25.

Watson was brought to the Lauderdale County Justice Center from a jail in 
another county but he did not appear in person before the judge after his 
lawyer requested the video arraignment. Only the judge was able to see Watson 
through her bench camera.

Watson was on lawn mowing duties at West Tennessee State Penitentiary on Aug. 7 
when he went to Debra Johnson's home on prison grounds and killed the 
64-year-old corrections administrator, authorities said. Johnson's body was 
found in the home with a cord wrapped around her neck, according to court 
documents.

Watson then escaped on a tractor, which was later found near the prison, the 
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said.

Watson eluded authorities for 4 days until his arrest Sunday. He was arrested 
hours after he was recorded on surveillance cameras outside a home in Henning, 
10 miles (16 kilometers) from the prison.

Watson has been serving a 15-year sentence for especially aggravated 
kidnapping. He also had been previously convicted of aggravated child abuse. 
Watson had access to a tractor and a golf cart as a "trusty" — an inmate 
granted special privileges as a trustworthy person, authorities said.

Gov. Bill Lee said Monday that Tennessee prison officials followed protocol 
prior to Watson's escape. But he added that his administration wants to examine 
the Department of Correction protocols involved in the escape.

(source: Associated Press)

*********************

Conservative Group Pushes for Death Penalty Alternatives



A group of conservatives in Tennessee are speaking out against the death 
penalty. State officials began executions again in Tennessee last year and 
another execution is scheduled for Thursday night, August 15th.

Nashville resident Amy Lawrence, state coordinator of Tennessee Conservatives 
Concerned About the Death Penalty, said in a news release, that the death 
penalty goes against the “basic tenets” of the group’s beliefs, that ”murders 
should be followed with swift and sure justice,” and that a change in thinking 
is taking place now on the death penalty in red-state legislatures.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced yesterday that he will not intervene in 
Thursday’s scheduled execution of Tennessee death-row inmate Stephen Michael 
West. According to The Tennessean, West was moved into a cell next to the 
execution chamber in Nashville yesterday and will order his last meal sometime 
today.

“After thorough consideration of Stephen West’s request for clemency and a 
review of the case, the state of Tennessee’s sentence will stand, and I will 
not be intervening,” Lee said in a statement Tuesday.

West was convicted for the 1986 murders of a woman and her 15-year-old child in 
Union County, according to The Tennessean. West was also convicted of raping 
the young girl and inflicting 17 “torture-type cuts” to her stomach, according 
to the paper.

West argued he was present during the murders but he didn’t do it. Instead, he 
said it was the work of a friend of his from work.

West’s will be the state’s fifth execution since state officials began 
scheduling them again last year. Before that, the state’s last execution was in 
2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. There are now 56 
prisoners on death row in Tennessee.

Next month, New Orleans will host the first annual national meeting of 
Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. Lawrence and others from 
Tennessee will attend. She spoke with us regarding her group and its aims. — 
Toby Sells

Memphis Flyer: How does the death penalty violate the basic tenets of your 
group’s beliefs?

Amy Lawrence: I believe that the core tenet of conservatism is small, limited 
government, and as conservatives, we apply this concept to a variety of issues, 
whether that be taxation, healthcare, or regulations. This is the same tenet 
that should be applied to capital punishment.

Simply put, the death penalty is anything but small, limited government. It is 
a prime example of a bloated, broken government program. It is costly, it risks 
executing an innocent person, and it leaves the ultimate power over life and 
death in the hands of a fallible system.

MF: You also said that, “murders should be followed with swift and sure 
justice.” What does that justice look like to you?

AL: Well, it sure doesn't look like years of appeals and decades of court 
proceedings for the victims' family members.

The death penalty does not provide swift and sure justice but instead drags 
families through decades of litigation, where in at least 1/2 the cases in 
Tennessee, the sentence is overturned and the convicted receives a life 
sentence anyway.

Life without parole begins as soon as the trial is over and allows families to 
at least have some legal finality.

MF: What alternatives to the death penalty does your group hope lawmakers will 
consider?

The death penalty does not provide swift and sure justice.

AL: Tennessee already has a life sentence of 51 years before parole eligibility 
and life without parole, which does not allow for parole ever. These are the 
two sentences that the majority of murderers already receive.

Death sentences are on the decline statewide and have been for some years with 
roughly only 2 death sentences in Tennessee between 2013-2018. More and more 
prosecutors seek the alternative sentences because of the cost of seeking the 
death penalty and to spare victims' families while juries are also less likely 
to impose death sentences.

MF: Is an alternative to the death penalty a hard sell in the broader 
conservative community?

AL: I really focus on what unites conservatives on this issue — limited 
government, fiscal responsibility, and pro-life stances.

We know that government and human decisions are error-prone. We simply cannot 
guarantee that we can carry out capital punishment with 100 % accuracy. While 
the punishment might be just in some circumstances, we cannot carry it out 
justly.

We also have limited resources and with death sentences costing $1 to $2 
million more than life without parole. I think the majority of people would 
support having those resources go towards victims' compensation, law 
enforcement, and mental health programs.

MF: What is the next step for your group in this push?

AL: We continue to educate the public about the shortcomings of our system and 
will continue to push for laws to make the system more just.

MF: Is there anything else you’d like to say or anything I left out?

AL: Absolutely! If you would like to learn more about our organization, check 
out our website www.tnconservativesconcerned.org. I'm also happy to talk to 
civic groups and faith communities about this work.

(source: memphisflyer.com)








ARIZONA:

Prosecutors lose bid to seek death penalty against immigrant



Prosecutors have lost another bid to seek the death penalty against a Mexican 
immigrant charged with murder in the 2015 shooting death of a convenience store 
clerk in metro Phoenix.

The Arizona Court of Appeals last week denied a request by prosecutors to 
reinstate their effort to seek the death penalty against Apolinar Altamirano in 
the killing of 21-year-old clerk Grant Ronnebeck.

Prosecutors had appealed a decision by a lower-court judge in early July that 
said prosecutors could no longer seek the death penalty because Altamirano is 
intellectually disabled.

The case against Altamirano has been cited by President Donald Trump, who has 
railed against crimes committed against American citizens by immigrants who are 
the United States illegally.

Altamirano has pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges in Ronnebeck's 
death.

(source: Associated Press)








CALIFORNIA:

Death penalty upheld in 1985 slaying of San Quentin guard, despite recantation



Despite finding that prosecution witnesses had recanted their testimony and 
lied under oath, the California Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of 
a San Quentin inmate for taking part in the fatal stabbing of a prison guard in 
1985.

Jarvis Masters was one of three prisoners, all members of the Black Guerrilla 
Family gang, convicted of murdering Sgt. Dean Burchfield, 38. Andre Johnson, 
who stabbed Burchfield, and Lawrence Woodard, convicted of ordering the 
killing, were sentenced to life without parole. Prosecution witnesses said 
Masters took part in the planning, sharpened the knife and gave it to Johnson.

After the trial, however, three prosecution witnesses said they had testified 
falsely. The key witness, Rufus Willis, who testified that Masters had helped 
plot the killing and had written an incriminating note, said in a post-trial 
statement that a prosecutor had threatened to return him to prison unless he 
cooperated, a transfer that would have been lethal because of his role as an 
informer.

Another witness, Bobby Evans, said he had failed to disclose a prosecution 
promise of leniency in his own case. Masters’ co-defendants also submitted 
statements saying he had not been involved.

Masters had been serving a sentence for teenage robberies in the Los Angeles 
area at the time of the killing. Now 57, he has become a Buddhist on Death Row, 
counsels other inmates and has written two books in prison, gaining plaudits 
from Bishop Desmond Tutu and Sister Helen Prejean, a prominent opponent of the 
death penalty.

The court upheld his conviction and death sentence on appeal in 2016 but 
referred his post-trial allegations to a former Marin County judge, Lynn 
Duryee. After hearing further testimony, she concluded that the central 
prosecution witnesses against Masters were “liars with highly unreliable and 
selective memories” as well as “career criminals” and “well-known snitches”— 
and that their recantations were no more believable than their trial testimony.

The court accepted those findings Monday and reaffirmed Masters’ conviction and 
sentence.

Masters may have shown that his main accusing witnesses “generally are liars,” 
Justice Goodwin Liu said in the 7-0 ruling, “but he does not offer any 
persuasive reason to credit their recantations over their trial testimony.”

Liu said Masters’ lawyers had extensively challenged the credibility of his 
main accuser, Willis, during the trial, and also presented evidence that Evans 
had been an informant in other cases. The jury heard that evidence and found 
Masters guilty, Liu said, and the additional evidence presented to Duryee would 
not have changed the outcome.

Liu also issued a separate opinion, joined by Justice Mariano-Florentino 
Cuéllar, saying it was “understandable why Masters finds (Duryee’s) report 
unsettling” in view of the lies she attributed to the chief prosecution 
witnesses. Noting that Masters’ sentence was harsher than those of the actual 
killers, Liu said the case did not offer the court an opportunity to consider 
whether such verdicts “may be indicative of arbitrariness in the application of 
the death penalty.”

Joseph Baxter, a lawyer for Masters, called the ruling “absurd.”

“The court is saying, if the case is rotten to the core, it doesn’t matter, 
because the court can’t tell if you’re lying now or if you were lying then,” 
Baxter said. If the jury had heard evidence that Willis was a liar and Evans 
was “on the government payroll” as an informant, he said, the outcome would 
have been different.

“Jarvis Masters has never had a fair trial,” Baxter asserted. He said he may 
ask the court for a rehearing or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the case 
could also be taken to U.S. District Court.

(source: San Francisco Chronicle)








OREGON:

Senator to push for special session to fix ‘mistake’ in Oregon’s death penalty 
bill



A legislator who helped pass a new law limiting the crimes eligible for capital 
punishment was engaged in damage control Wednesday after a top government 
lawyer said the law applies to past aggravated murder cases despite assurances 
that the law wasn’t “retroactive.”

Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, said he will ask Gov. Kate Brown to call a 
special session to make sure the legislation, Senate Bill 1013, doesn’t cover 
death penalty cases sent back to lower courts for new sentencing hearings.

Oregon’s new law limiting the death penalty applies to past cases, new legal 
opinion says

State legislators this year assured Oregonians that a new law significantly 
limiting the death penalty in Oregon wouldn’t apply to death row cases returned 
to lower courts for retrial or new sentencing hearings. Now, a top lawyer with 
the Oregon Department of Justice has told prosecutors that the law does indeed 
affect those cases -- and pending aggravated murder cases as well.

“Everyone that was in the process -- and you can hear whenever anyone talked 
about it -- was the intent was it was not retroactive,” Prozanski said.

But “retroactive” apparently means different things to different people. 
Prozanski offered a narrow interpretation, while prosecutors assumed it meant 
all past cases were off limits. The Oregon Department of Justice, meanwhile, 
said the law applies more broadly to past and pending cases.

On Wednesday, Prozanski explained, that he didn’t mean for SB 1013 to apply to 
a subset of death penalty cases -- those sent back to lower courts for new 
sentences. He said he did, however, intend for it to apply to pending cases and 
aggravated murder convictions sent back to lower courts for new trials.

But prosecutors said Prozanski’s and Rep. Jennifer Williamson’s references to 
retroactivity made no such distinction.

“I think a reasonable understanding of ‘It’s not retroactive’ is it’s going to 
apply to crimes going forward,” Washington County District Attorney Kevin 
Barton said.

In a recent email to prosecutors, the Oregon Department of Justice’s solicitor 
general said the state’s new aggravated murder law applies to new sentencing 
hearings in capital cases as well as to pending cases -- an opinion that sent 
Barton and other district attorneys reeling.

It’s not unusual for aggravated murder convictions or death sentences to be 
overturned on appeal. In the past 21/2 years, seven cases have been reversed. 
None of the 31 people on Oregon’s death row have exhausted their court 
challenges.

The new law narrows the definition of aggravated murder, which is the only 
crime in Oregon eligible for a death sentence. Aggravated murder is now limited 
to defendants who kill two or more people as an act of organized terrorism; 
kill a child younger than 14 intentionally and with premeditation; kill another 
person while locked in jail or prison for a previous murder; or kill a police, 
correctional or probation officer.

During the legislative session, Williamson, D-Portland, responded to concerns 
about how the law would be applied.

“I want to make a couple things clear about this law, or this legislation, 
which is first it is not retroactive,” she said in a speech on June 19 before 
the Oregon House passed SB 1013. “It applies to aggravated murder cases going 
forward.”

Williamson also last month told The Oregonian/OregonLive that an unrelated 
bill, Senate Bill 1005, would ensure that SB 1013 wouldn’t apply to defendants 
who have previously been sentenced but who have been granted reversals.

Williamson, who is a lawyer, said lawmakers wanted their intent to be clear so 
they added the language, on the advice of legislative lawyers, after the 
aggravated murder bill had already passed both houses.

Williamson on Wednesday didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. It’s 
unclear where the governor stands on the matter. Brown’s staff did not respond 
to emails or a phone call asking whether the governor supports Prozanski’s call 
for a special session.

Prozanski, an attorney, said he was surprised to learn of the recent Justice 
Department opinion and described the disconnect between lawmakers’ intent and 
the bill’s language as “a drafting error” that should be fixed before the law’s 
Sept. 29 effective date.

“This was an oversight, a mistake that was made just like we have seen on 
multiple bills that we’ve had before us,” he said. “It’s very unfortunate that 
this was made because most of us were under the belief as to how it was written 
was going to accomplish what our intent was.”

In Solicitor General Benjamin’s Gutman’s email to prosecutors, he wrote that 
the provisions of the new statute “apply to crimes committed before, on or 
after the effective date” and have sentencing dates on or after Sept. 29.

“Thus,” he wrote, “if the case has sentencing proceedings after September, 
regardless what happened in the case before, the new provisions apply.”

The issue came up during the agency’s review of a Washington County trial court 
ruling last week involving Martin Allen Johnson who authorities say raped and 
murdered a 15-year-old Tigard girl in 1998 before throwing her body off an 
Astoria bridge.

As soon as Brown signed the bill into law, Johnson’s lawyers raised the issue 
of whether it applies to their client. Circuit Judge Eric Butterfield 
determined that Johnson’s crime no longer qualifies as aggravated murder under 
the new law and therefore he isn’t eligible for the death penalty.

Jeff Ellis, a lawyer and director of the Oregon Capital Resource Center, said 3 
bills -- SB 1013 and SB 1005 on the death penalty as well SB 1008 on juvenile 
justice have some overlap -- but it’s clear the aggravated murder statute 
applies to pending cases, as well as those sent back for new trials and 
sentencing hearings.

“It’s very clear,” Ellis said. “Solicitor General Gutman wasn’t the first 
person to come to that conclusion. I came to that conclusion a long time ago.

“And look, it does take some amount of reading,” he said. “There are a lot of 
provisions there and it’s always difficult when you are trying to read three 
bills and understand exactly how they interact with each other.”

(source: oregonlive.com)

******************

Voters should have final say on death penalty



Gov. Kate Brown last week signed a bill that narrows Oregon’s use of the death 
penalty by limiting the crimes that qualify for capital punishment.

The bill likely won’t make that much difference in Oregon, a state that has not 
executed a prisoner since 1997 and doesn’t seem poised to do so anytime soon. 
Brown has maintained a moratorium on capital punishment that was first put into 
place by Gov. John Kitzhaber.

The bill was crafted in such a way that the issue didn’t have to be referred to 
voters. In that regard, it represents a missed opportunity. Voters should have 
gotten the chance to weigh in, not just on this issue, but on the larger 
question: Should Oregon continue to keep capital punishment on the books?

The bill Brown signed carefully skates around that question; it fact, it was 
crafted to do that. Previously, the death sentence in Oregon could be applied 
to cases of aggravated murder, which includes crimes such as killing on-duty 
police officers or slayings committed during a rape or robbery. Now, those 
crimes will receive sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

The death penalty in Oregon now can only be applied in 4 types of crimes: 
killings motivated by terrorism, murders of children 14 years or younger, 
killings by an incarcerated person who’s serving a previous aggravated murder 
sentence and premeditated killings of police or corrections officers.

The law is not retroactive and will not apply to the 30 people on Oregon’s 
death row.

It seems obvious that lawmakers were looking for a way to avoid asking the 
broader question about whether the state should follow the example of other 
states and do away with capital punishment. But we don’t understand their 
reluctance, unless lawmakers thought that Oregonians were likely to reject any 
attempt to ban the death penalty.

We’re not so sure that’s the case, considering Oregonians’ long and twisty 
history with the death penalty. Capital punishment was outlawed by Oregon 
voters in 1914 and then reenacted in 1978. 3 years later, the state Supreme 
Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, a ruling that paved 
the way for a 1984 initiative in which voters reaffirmed capital punishment.

Since then, the topic rarely has been revisited in Oregon, and the 
gubernatorial moratoriums have had the effect of sweeping the debate about 
capital punishment under the rug. It would have been an easy matter to refer 
the measure, Senate Bill 1013, to the state’s voters. Or death penalty 
opponents could have moved to place the broader question on a statewide ballot.

That last option still is available to legislators — or, for that matter, to 
any group of citizens with the interest, time and money required to place an 
initiative on the statewide ballot. But surely there is a lawmaker willing to 
take a stab at referring the big question to voters; certainly, the discussion 
that would result is long overdue.

(source: Albany Democrat-Herald)

****************

Opinion: New Oregon death penalty rules affect old cases



A recent opinion from the Oregon Department of Justice that a former death row 
inmate cannot be sentenced to death upon retrial because of a new law curbing 
the use of the death penalty has the state's prosecutors working to determine 
how many murder cases might be affected.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports that Benjamin Gutman, Oregon's solicitor 
general, wrote the email to prosecutors, which was distributed Friday and later 
obtained by the newspaper.

Gutman said the issue came up during the agency's review of a Washington County 
trial court ruling last week involving Martin Allen Johnson who authorities say 
raped and murdered a 15-year-old Tigard girl in 1998 before throwing her body 
off an Astoria bridge.

As soon as Gov. Kate Brown signed Senate Bill 1013, which limits the crimes 
eligible for the death penalty, Johnson's lawyers raised the issue of whether 
the law applies to their client. Circuit Judge Eric Butterfield determined that 
Johnson's crime no longer qualifies as aggravated murder under the new law and 
therefore he isn't eligible for the death penalty.

"I know that I have had conversations with many of you in which I suggested 
otherwise but after careful review of the issue, we have concluded that we 
don't have a plausible basis for an appeal," Gutman wrote.

It is unclear how the opinion will affect some of the state's most notorious 
cases.

The new law narrows the definition of aggravated murder, which is the only 
crime in Oregon eligible for a death sentence. Aggravated murder is now limited 
to defendants who kill two or more people as an act of organized terrorism; 
kill a child younger than 14 intentionally and with premeditation; kill another 
person while locked in jail or prison for a previous murder; or kill a police, 
correctional or probation officer.

Gutman, who as solicitor general oversees the state's appellate division, said 
the Justice Department's analysis has broad implications. Lawyers for the 
agency handle all appeals for criminal cases.

He sent the email to prosecutors with aggravated murder cases that have been 
sent back for retrial.

"I thought all of your offices would want to know about our conclusion because 
it also means that we do not think we could defend a death sentence (or even an 
aggravated murder conviction) obtained in any of the pending cases even if the 
trial courts were to rule differently than the court" in the Washington County 
case, he wrote.

Tim Colahan, executive director of the Oregon District Attorneys Association, 
and other prosecutors said the opinion has injected uncertainty into the most 
serious cases and undermined the families of murder victims.

District attorneys are trying to determine how many cases may be affected by 
the opinion, he said.

(source: Associated Press)








USA:

“River of Fire”: In New Memoir, Sister Helen Prejean Reflects on Decades of 
Fighting Executions



AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to 
resume the death penalty after a more than 15-year moratorium. Last month, 
Attorney General William Barr ordered the execution of five death row prisoners 
beginning in December. The federal government has executed just three people 
since 1963, the last being in 2003. On Monday, Barr proposed fast-tracking 
executions in mass murder cases.

ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR: We will be proposing legislation providing that 
in cases of mass murder or in cases of murder of a law enforcement officer, 
there will be a strict timetable for judicial proceedings that will allow the 
imposition of the death sentence without undue delay. Punishment must be swift.

AMY GOODMAN: Attorney General Barr’s comments echoed President Trump’s remarks 
from last week in the aftermath of the El Paso and Dayton shootings.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Today, I am also directing the Department of Justice to 
propose legislation ensuring that those who commit hate crimes and mass murders 
face the death penalty and that this capital punishment be delivered quickly, 
decisively, and without years of needless delay.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Experts say capital punishment does not help deter homicides and 
that errors and racism in the criminal justice system extend to those sentenced 
to death. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, more 160 people 
who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated 
since 1973. The death penalty has been abolished in 106 countries, while 
another 28 have moratoriums or effectively do not use the practice. The United 
Nations has called for a global ban on the practice, and Amnesty International 
calls it “the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.”

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by Sister Helen Prejean, one of the 
world’s most well-known anti-death-penalty activists. As a Catholic nun, she 
began her prison ministry almost 40 years ago. She is the author of the 
best-selling book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty. 
The book was turned into the Academy Award-winning film starring Susan Sarandon 
and Sean Penn. Her new book is just out this week. It’s called River of Fire: 
My Spiritual Journey. Sister Helen Prejean is also the founder of Survive, a 
victims’ advocacy group in New Orleans. She continues to counsel not only 
prisoners on death row, but also the families of murder victims.

Sister Helen Prejean, it’s great to have you back here in our New York studios.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Great to be here, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Congratulations on your book, as you hear, in the last weeks, the 
surprise announcement of the Attorney General William Barr that they are 
basically restarting the federal death penalty, and they immediately said they 
would kill five prisoners who have been on federal death row, and then, in the 
wake of the El Paso and the Dayton killings, saying — Barr just announcing that 
he will particularly go after mass shooters. In this country, it may be that 
many people agree with him. What are your thoughts?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Well, I’m not surprised that William Barr did this or the 
Trump administration wants to expedite federal executions. It’s their whole way 
of approaching everything, that the way is through violence to try to solve 
social problems.

The federal death penalty is not going to be any more equal justice under law 
than the state death penalties have been. The mood in the country is to shut 
the death penalty down, first in practice and then gradually, state by state, 
to repeal it. The way the federal death penalty has always worked, it’s been up 
to the discretion of individual federal prosecutors. So, we’ve had, side by 
side, whereas in Manhattan, in New York, the federal prosecutors never went for 
the death penalty, over in Texas, they were always going for the death penalty. 
And this will be no different.

So, I’m not at all surprised they’re doing it. They also seem to have no 
understanding about how the courts work. They can claim all they want that 
they’re going to fast-track this and speed up these executions, but there is 
the Constitution, and there are the appeals. And so, I’ve been talking to 
federal defenders of these cases. And, of course, they’re going to do 
everything they can to save their client’s life.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in your new book, it’s more of a recounting of your life 
story in terms of how — your own journey, from a child in Louisiana, was this? 
Could you talk about how you developed, first in your ministry and when you 
decided to go into prison ministry?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Yeah. I mean, it’s called River of Fire. And the epigraph 
in it is from Saint Bonaventure: “Ask not for understanding, ask for the fire.” 
The fire part was when the passion in my own soul erupted, that I can’t just 
ask God to solve the problems of the world, or just be charitable to the people 
around me, but that the deepest dimensions of the gospel of Jesus called me to 
justice. So I got involved with poor people in New Orleans, African Americans, 
who became my teachers, helped me understand what white privilege is, helped me 
understand what institutional racism.

And it’s while I was in that soil, in that terrain, living among 
African-American people struggling against poverty and racism, I got an 
invitation one day to write a man on death row. I never dreamed he was going to 
be executed. It was in the early '80s, and we hadn't had an execution in 20 
years. I wrote a letter to him. He wrote back. And 2 1/2 years later, he was 
executed.

And that’s the fire, because, I describe it in the preface in the book: “They 
killed a man with fire one night. They strapped him in a wooden chair and 
pumped electricity through his body until he was dead. His killing was a legal 
act. No religious leaders protested the killing that night. But I was there. I 
saw it with my own eyes. And what I saw set my soul on fire, a fire that burns 
in me still.”

So I trace my journey of spiritual awakening from private religion, being 
apolitical, to rolling up my sleeves and getting engaged. If justice is going 
to come, then we have to be the ones to do it, and in our democracy, in our 
country. So I’ve had constant dialogue with my church, the Catholic Church — 
people, first of all, also the hierarchy, but mostly the people. And I’ve seen 
how that dialogue pays off. Finally, on August 2nd, 2018, after 1,600 years, 
Pope Francis declared, under no conditions could we ever trust governments to 
execute their citizens. So, when you love your country, when you love your 
church, you keep a constant dialogue of what needs to change and helping to 
make that change happen.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back in time to that film that so rocked this 
nation, Dead Man Walking, that starred Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, based on 
your first book. I wanted to go to a trailer of that film.

ASSISTANT DA: This man shot Walter Delacroix two times in the back of his dead 
and raped Hope Percy and stabbed her 17 times. In the courtroom and at 
sentencing, he was smiling and chewing his gum. He is an unfeeling, perverse 
misfit, and it is time.

CHAPLAIN: You have put in a request to be the spiritual adviser to Matthew 
Poncelet. This boy is to be executed in 6 days. You must be very, very careful.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: [played by Susan Sarandon] Well, Matthew, I made it.

MATTHEW PONCELET: [played by Sean Penn] You’ve never done this before?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: No.

MATTHEW PONCELET: You’ve never been this close to a murderer before?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Not that I know of.

WARDEN: What is a nun doing in a place like this?


SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: I just want to help him take responsibility for what he 
did.

MATTHEW PONCELET: I like being alone with you. You’re looking real good to me.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Death is breathing down your neck, and you’re playing 
your little man-on-the-make games.

REPORTER: You’re a white supremacist, a follower of Hitler?

MATTHEW PONCELET: Hitler was a leader. He was on the right track that the Aryan 
was the master race.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: You are making it so easy for them to kill you, coming 
across as some kind of a crazed, animal, Nazi, racist mad dog who deserves to 
die.

MATTHEW PONCELET: You can leave.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: I’m not going to do that.

UNIDENTIFIED: You want to be there to comfort him when he dies? This is an evil 
man.

MATTHEW PONCELET: I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill nobody. I swear to God I 
didn’t.

I ain’t gonna get no chair, Daddy.

I’m pissed off at them kids for being parked out in the woods that night, 
pissed off at their parents for coming to see me die.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: You blame the government. You blame drugs. You blame 
blacks. What about Matthew Poncelet? What? Is he just an innocent?

If you do die, as your friend, I want to help you die with dignity. And I don’t 
see how you can do that unless you start to own up to the part you played in 
Walter and Hope’s death.

AMY GOODMAN: So, there you have the trailer for Dead Man Walking. Susan 
Sarandon would win best actress playing you; she won the Oscar for that. And 
Tim Robbins directed. Bruce Springsteen wrote the music. Everyone was 
nominated. I mean, the power of this film was the power of your accompaniment, 
the story that is real, and how you started on that process and go through it 
’til today. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the convicted bomber of the Boston Marathon, one 
of the focuses of the new discussion about reviving the federal death penalty, 
you met with him five times in 2015, and you testified on his behalf, saying, 
“I presented him as a human being.” Talk about what drives you to do this work. 
What is it like to meet these prisoners, to accompany them to their death?

/ SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Well, it’s human rights, that human beings can never be 
identified solely with their actions, that everybody is worth more than the 
worst thing they’ve ever done. So, like at Dzhokhar’s trial, all prosecution 
wanted to do was demonize him.

AMY GOODMAN: This is the Boston Marathon bomber.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Yeah, the Boston Marathon, and he was the younger 
brother. All I said, all the words I could get before the jury were, “He’s a 
human being, and he felt sorrow for what he did.” And I showed why I could say 
that. And it’s —

AMY GOODMAN: Why could you say that?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Because I had met him. And I, at some point — and this 
came out and the testimony — I just said, “Dzhokhar, do you hate us all? Would 
you drop a bomb on all of us?” And he lowered his eyes like this, and he just 
said, “No, of course not. Nobody deserves to die like that.”

So, you had to be so careful in the language. The prosecutor was holding me to 
just the language you could use, the judge and so forth. But it’s with 
everybody I’ve accompanied to death. Some of them, most of them, were guilty. 
Two of them were innocent because it’s so broken. And they have done despicable 
things. But the death penalty is about us.

And more and more people are standing up now, including guards and wardens, who 
have been close to the killing process. We haven’t had an execution in 
Louisiana in 17 years. There’s no official thing that has said we’re not going 
to kill people. And that’s going on across the country, a lot of times because 
the guards who have had to do the killing, and the wardens, don’t want to do it 
anymore, because it does nothing. And they are so close.

And that’s been the heart of the conversation in the Catholic Church. And I 
said to Pope John Paul II, I said, “Does the Catholic Church only uphold the 
dignity of innocent life? Well, when I’m walking with a man to execution, and 
he’s shackled hand and foot, and he’s surrounded by six guards, and they’re 
going to walk him down this hall and strap him down and kill him, and he kind 
of turns to me and says, 'Sister, please pray God holds up my legs.' Can you 
help the church uphold the dignity of all life, that to take a human being and 
render them defenseless and kill them can never be justified?” And so, Pope 
John Paul was the first one, and then Pope Francis finally moved it to 
completion and said, under no circumstances can we ever allow the state to 
kill. It’s human rights that drives me, because I get to meet the human beings.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Have you been surprised by the gradual shift in public opinion 
in this country, and also the fact that most Americans don’t realize what an 
outlier the United States is compared to —

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — the rest of the countries in the world on this issue?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: No, absolutely. You know what? When I came out of that 
execution chamber, when Pat Sonnier — he was the first — had just been killed, 
it was the middle of the night. I threw up. I had never in my life seen 
anything like this. And I remember thinking very clearly, the people are never 
going to be brought close to this. There had been two court cases to try to 
make executions public. They’re removed from it. They’re made to be afraid: 
These murderers are evil; they’re going to come kill you; they’re going to get 
out; they’ll kill people in prison. And you make people afraid, and you keep 
them from seeing what actually happens.

So that’s why I wrote Dead Man Walking and why I’ve been out talking to the 
American people, mostly through story, to bring them close like. The death 
penalty is about us. People are going to do terrible crimes. But we have the 
most premeditated protocol of taking a person, rendering them defenseless and 
killing them. We’re better than that. And most of the people I have — in all of 
these 50 states I’ve been in, they say, “Well, we didn’t know it was like 
that.” Bring the people close to the reality. They have good hearts, and they 
get it. And so, I’ve been very gratified to see that happening.

AMY GOODMAN: You said, after you accompanied the first man, Dead Man Walking, 
that the film is based on, Patrick, that you were sorry at the time you hadn’t 
reached out more to the families of the victims. But that is something you have 
done now a great deal over these years. Talk about that experience.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: You know, I had a great editor, Jason Epstein, when I 
wrote Dead Man Walking. And when he saw in the first draft that I had kind of 
downplayed not reaching out to the victim’s family, said I had never done this 
before, I was so in the human rights of the person being executed, and he said, 
“Helen, you’re letting yourself off really easy here.” He said, “It was 
cowardice, wasn’t it? You were scared.” That was absolutely true. And he said, 
“You need to go back, and you need to rewrite that. Just say what a great 
mistake it was not to reach out to the victim’s family.”

And see, I just thought they would hate me so much because I was opposed to the 
execution. And I was wrong. One of the families did in fact take that position. 
But Lloyd LeBlanc, whom I consider the hero in Dead Man Walking, his son David, 
17, had been killed, and he confronted me, when we met, and he said, “Sister, 
all this time you’ve been visiting those two brothers, you didn’t come see us. 
You can’t believe the pressure we’re under,” and that I had made a great 
mistake: I hadn’t reached out to him. And he was the first one who began to 
teach me.

And then we started the group Survive, to help murder victims’ families. They 
are the ones rising up more and more, helping to end the death penalty. When 
New Jersey did away with the death penalty in their Legislature 12 years ago, 
62 murder victims’ families said, “Don’t kill for us. The death penalty 
revictimizes us. We need to be able to grieve, and we need to be able to move 
on, but you put us in a holding pattern of 15, 20 years waiting for this 
justice that never happens.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And all of these prisoners on death row, who are, in essence, 
awaiting their execution, the continued growth of the, quote, “death row 
population,” even as you say many states are not going through with their 
executions, what’s your sense of their lives, as well, on death row?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Well, it’s like a living death in so many ways, because 
you are waiting for death to come. You’re in an extremely confined environment, 
like the death row cells in Louisiana. It’s summer. It’s so hot. And 
constantly, the constant noise. All that you are subjected to, waiting to be 
killed. And you’re considered disposable human waste. You get a thousand 
signals a day that you’re not worth anything.

That’s so opposite of what I’ve — you know, what Jesus is about, what 
Christianity is about. And when I hear religion quoted, like Jeff Sessions, 
ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, just did to justify the separation of 
children from their parents at the border, pulling in a religious quote from 
Romans 13, that if something is the law, God’s behind it. It’s with the 
authority of God. I hate to see Christianity used like this. And I’ve actually 
had people say, like a member of the pardon board in Louisiana, “Well, Jesus 
was executed for our sins. If he hadn’t been executed by the Romans, we 
wouldn’t be saved. We’ve got to have executions.” Like, the image of God behind 
that is a wrathful God whose sense of justice has been offended and demands a 
sacrificial death. What kind of God is that? We’ve got to get Jesus right. 
We’ve got to get Christianity right. And I hate to see religion used to justify 
violence. It’s the opposite of what Jesus was about.

AMY GOODMAN: You have the federal government, President Trump and William Barr, 
saying they’re going to resume federal death penalty cases, executions, after 
almost 20 years. Yet you have the states, one by one — we are, in this country, 
almost at a majority of states that are saying no to the death penalty.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Because the Trump administration feels they have absolute 
power and they could do whatever they want, so they declare, “Well, we’re going 
to do this.” And we notice a pattern that often the Trump administration has 
made declarations of what they’re going to do to immigrants or the Muslim ban, 
and they have no understanding of the courts and the constitutional rights.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Yes. So, please, God, that federal defenders will be in 
there using the Constitution to block this and to slow it down and make it not 
happen.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to do Part 2 of our discussion and post it online at 
democracynow.org. Sister Helen Prejean is the author of River of Fire: My 
Spiritual Journey. This follows her book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness 
Account of the Death Penalty. That does it for our broadcast. I’m Amy Goodman, 
with Juan González. This is Democracy Now!

(source: democracynow.org)